The latest changes implemented in the Systemd repo, related to or prompted by age-verification laws, have made many people unhappy (I suppose links about this aren't necessary). This has led to a surge in Systemd forks during the last days ("surge" because there have always been plenty of forks). Here are some forks that explicitly mention those changes as their reason for forking (rough time ordering taken from the fork page):
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paramazo/systemd "The systemd System and Service Manager without age verification"
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ganitam/systemd "Systemd fork just before the Age Verification addition. Hoping more capable developers and maintainers do same.."
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GSYT-Productions/systemd-fork "The systemd System and Service Manager, without the stupid Age Verification"
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speedythesnail/unret arded-systemd "The systemd System and Service Manager, without the ret arded age-verification commits"
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ta13579/systemd "The systemd System and Service Manager WITHOUT THE FUCKING AGE CHECKS"
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r4shsec/systemd-no-age-verification "This is systemd but without the age verification made via pull request https://github.com/systemd/systemd/pull/40978"
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Pingasmaster/fightthesystemd "Systemd without the nonsense: no age verification, no lighthouse built-in."
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Jeffrey-Sardina/system "Liberated systemd -- no surveillance. Ever."
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HaplessIdiot/systemd-saneagecheck "The systemd System and Service Manager with age verification bypass and polling rate options for said feature"
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Queer-Coded-LGBTQ/systemd-fuck-california "The systemd System and Service Manager, but without age bs added in."
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Codiak540/unshitted-systemd "A fork of systemd aiming to strip the Age verification. Sue me california."
Hopefully the energy of this reaction won't be scattered among too many alternatives, although some amount of scattering is always good.
I suppose people are afraid that this is just the step one of a series of incremental changes that will make systemd more surveillance friendly. Regarding changing distros, starting a fork and doing couple fixes is not the same thing as maintaining it and being vetted by the community. So I would too change distro to a non systemd one, although options might be quite limited.
Just use the regular, non-California edition of your regular distribution instead of jumping through hoops for a feature that doesn't affect almost the entire planet anyway.
That was a comment in the case this feature evolves into many apps requiring the age verification via this info. In that case I would like to part ways with any OS using systemd as a means of protest.
California, New York, Texas, Brazil, the UK, I think at least 2 more states as well...this is only the beginning. Everybody is jumping on the surveillance state/data broker hype train.
My question is when will governments attempt to pass stupid and impossible laws like requiring ISPs to verify your age before you can connect to the internet.
Yep.
We are in a lot of trouble.
Worsened by all those trying to normalise dismissiveness to the danger.
[Edit: PS... Germany recently mandated ODF (Open Document Format), to prevent the user-lock-in abuse of proprietary formats, and are pushing for more "Open Source"... so there's at least still some sense in the world. It's not all doom yet.]